Microsoft makes its Bing search, Office 365 AI-smart; updates popular ‘Seeing AI’ app

Even as Google, Amazon and Apple are working extensively in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Microsoft is also not behind. The company on Wednesday announced including the AI in a variety of its products including Bing search, Azure cloud platform, and Office 365.

Microsoft also announced improvements to its 'Seeing AI' application that audibly assists visually impaired people. The company said that the application can now use computer vision to recognise more complex characters and even spot colours. Other new features added to the app include audible light detector.

Microsoft said its Seeing AI app has seen more than 100,000 downloads since its launch in the US earlier this year. The app is now being rolled out to more than 35 countries.

Additionally, the company demonstrated AI's integration with products, like HoloLens and customers, including Cheetah Mobile, UPS and Equadex.

Microsoft said Bing's newest features, Intelligent Answers, Advanced Image Search and Conversational Search now leverage AI to provide the most relevant results and search capabilities.

The Perspective Engine is introduced to help search users make sense of the jumble of numbers they increasingly encounter in the digital world.

New hands-free, eyes-free capabilities were added to Cortana to help with email and calendar management as well as the new Skills Suggestion and Chaining capabilities, giving Cortana the ability to understand users' overall intent and offer the next most relevant skill.

New AI capabilities in Office 365 for Outlook, Word and Excel now deliver personalized experiences that harness the power of intelligence to help people work smarter and focus on what matters most.

"A new partnership with Reddit, to bring information from the Reddit community to Bing. This is the first search partnership of its kind and includes three experiences; Reddit Responses, Reddit Community Results and Reddit AMA Discovery, with more to come," the company said.

Updates were made to Cognitive Services, including the general availability of The Language Understanding Intelligent Service (LUIS) and Azure Bot Service among other updates, continuing the commitment of making AI available to everyone.

Intelligent features in the all new Photos app for Windows 10 make it easier to manage, search and create videos to bring your memories to life. Microsoft also highlighted a new commitment of $50 million over the next five years to grow AI for Earth programme.